Waffle House Shooter Had Previous Run-In With Law Enforcement

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The idea of a nude mass shooter is…interesting. If the average active shooter is a crazed maniac, then someone doing the same thing nude just means this jackwagon allegedly turned the crazy up to eleven.

In July 2017, the U.S. Secret Service arrested [the shooter] for being in a “restricted area” near the White House, according to the Secret Service. After the arrest, his Illinois firearms authorization was revoked and local Illinois police seized four weapons.

“Among the weapons seized by those authorities was the AR-15 rifle used at the Waffle House today,” said Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron at a Sunday afternoon news conference.

Remember the story from last summer about a man in a restricted area around the White House, and how after searching his car they found firearms?

This is that guy.

During that event, he was instructed to move away from the restricted area. He informed them he had to speak with the president. They told him he would have to get with a tour group to do that. He reiterated that he was there to speak to the president, referred to himself as a “sovereign citizen” and said he had the right to “inspect” the White House grounds.

For those with questions, “sovereign citizens” are this freakish new, subculture of anti-government people who don’t want to live by the rules of the nation. They want to pick and choose what rules they feel apply to them, ignore everything else. They’re particularly against taxation, and claim no authority but their own.

This is the truly maddening part:

The weapons he had confiscated by authorities were given to [his] father. His father gave them back to him, including the weapon that was used to shoot up the Waffle House.

In other words, this is someone who had already had his right to keep and bear arms revoked, yet he got his guns anyway. Yet again, we have a mass shooting that we find stems from a law enforcement failure.

Well, that and the father failing to recognize that his son was apparently unhinged.

However, I have to take a small issue with Hot Air‘s Susan Wright on her take on “sovereign citizens,” mostly the claim that it’s new. It’s not. Oklahoma bombing conspirator Terry Nichols was a sovereign citizen prior to his eventual conviction, after all. That places this “new” movement at being around 20 years old at least.

But that’s a small quibble.

I agree with Wright. This is maddening. This is someone who was arrested by the Secret Service, had their firearm ownership license revoked, weapons seized by police, and yet still was able to use one of the same damn guns to shoot up a Waffle House.

That’s not the only maddening part. You know good and well that this will renew calls for gun control despite the fact that this guy was not legally permitted to own a gun in the first place.